How Travis Kelce, Serena Williams and Shaq spent their first paychecks

Travis Kelce made more than $70 million throughout his career in the National Football League, but he still remembers how he spent his first paycheck.

“I had my eye on a pair of Nike Air MAG ‘Marty McFlys’ in a size 13, and they were the coolest shoes I’d ever seen in my life,” Kelce said on the weekly “New Heights” podcast in May. “As soon as I got the check, I went online to look for them.”

Kelce said he spent about $10,000 on the limited-edition sneakers, which are replicas of the futuristic shoes worn by Michael J. Fox in “Back to the Future Part II.” Only 1,500 pairs were released.

“I’ve always been a huge Nike fan, and then you know, watching so much of the damn ‘Back to the Future’ — man, that was so sweet,” Kelce said on the podcast he co-hosts with his brother said. and Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce.

The sneakers have proven to be a good investment, as they are now regularly selling for $20,000 to $30,000 at dealers and auction sites.

Even so, Kelce said he was cavalier about money during his rookie season. “I spent too much money at the club, and I kept avoiding the rental lady,” he said. All he has to show for his first season as a pro is “some of my favorite shoes.”

This didn’t last long. After signing a five-year contract extension worth $46 million in 2016, Kelce signed a four-year contract worth just over $57 million in 2020. According to Forbes, his annual income outside of football is estimated at $3 million. According to Insider, Kelce’s net worth is estimated to be $30 million as of fall 2023.

Kelce isn’t the only athlete recalling his first payday. Here’s how other top athletes spent their first paychecks.

At age 20, Shaquille O’Neal spent $1 million within hours of receiving his first check from a $1 million trading card contract.

He bought himself a $150,000 Mercedes Benz, then another for his dad, and finally a smaller $100,000 for his mom. In 2017, he told Business Insider that he used the money left over to pay off his mother’s mortgage and do “what any couch potato does — buy rings and diamonds and earrings and stuff like that.”

At the time, he didn’t really understand how taxes worked and didn’t keep careful records of how much he spent. A bank manager had to tell him he was “in trouble” with about $50,000.

“After that, I said, ‘You know what? I need to get myself a business manager,'” O’Neal said.

Since then, O’Neal has become a successful investor, taking early stakes in companies like Google and Lyft. In 2016, Forbes estimated his net worth at over $400 million.

NBA champion Klay Thompson currently earns $43.2 million per year, but when he entered the league in 2011, his first salary was $35,000.

“It’s incredible,” he told Maverick Carter on the 2019 episode of Uninterrupted’s “Kneading Dough.” It was “more money than I thought.”

The first thing I bought: a pool table. “I still have it to this day,” Thompson said.

Thompson said that despite making “mistakes” with money during his rookie season — including buying a wardrobe of clothes he never wore — his “taste is not that extravagant.”

“Money doesn’t make me happier,” Carter said. As a junior at Washington State University, he was living “the good life” on a monthly stipend of $1,100.

“I can buy as much Taco Del Mar as I want. I can go to Target for a day,” Carter said. Later in his career, Thompson launched an organization to support children in the United States and the Bahamas through fitness and education.

Ultimately, “wealth is a state of mind,” he said. “If you have relationships and experiences around you, those are priceless. It’s better than any car or big house you can get.”

Tennis star Serena Williams didn’t actually spend her first paycheck.

“I never touched (the money) — I just put it in the bank,” she told Carter on an episode of the non-stop “Kneading the Dough.” “I remember depositing the check through the drive-thru and they said, ‘I think you need to come in.'”

She said she had always played for the love of the game, so much so that she would forget to collect the paycheck she earned in tournaments.

“When I first turned pro, you had to go get your check,” Williams told Carter. “I never picked it up, so at the end of the year, the tournament director would actually hand me the check because I was never going to pick it up.”

Williams says she never felt broke growing up. So when she started making money as a professional tennis player, she never felt the need to splurge.

This mentality paid off. Williams retires in 2022, but according to Forbes, his net worth is estimated at $290 million.

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